Do Not Enter, Part 5

She realized in a moment the sound was her voice, laughing alone in the dead cavern of carved stairs and useless steel door.  She tipped her head back and cackled, her sides convulsing until they ached, her eyes watering.  Rose laughed, deep guffaws, belly laughs which blinded her, immobilized her.  She couldn’t figure out why she laughed.  She just did.

When her breath failed and she gasped for air, she noticed she wasn’t laughing anymore.  She sobbed.

She tried to stand, but her leaden limbs made her feel as if she swam through gelatin.  She couldn’t manage anything but thick, slow movements.  She braced her hand against the wall, and stared into the rocky passage bending away from her.  She had no where else to go.

She stood upright, and pulled the phone out of her pocket again.

When she opened it, the display didn’t light up at all.

She sighed, slipped the phone back in her pocket, and stared down the passage.  The flickering, playing light seemed brighter somehow.

Rose drew a deep breath, and wondered if she suffered a delusion.  She reached out her hand and the sensation of the rocky, hard-edged wall, warm and dusty, dragged her fingers.  She opened her eyes again.  There was only one way to go.

She took a halting step forward.  Her shallow breath seemed loud, deafening, in the crypt-quiet passage.  Another step.  She heard the grind of debris — pebbles, grains of concrete and shards of rock — beneath her shoes.   Another step.

Then the sounds drifted to her.  Soft, distant, floating on drafts of hot air and ricocheting off the walls in the narrow corridor.

The moans.  The wails.  The desperate screams, cries and wails of tormented, agonized suffering.  They grew louder, clearer, distinct yet melded, some drifting high above the others, some more baritone.  All in terror, all in pain.  All in despair.

She tensed, held her breath.  It sounded like the voices of thousands.  And it got louder still.

Rose balked, turned back toward the door.

The wall was gone.  The door was open, the stairs illuminated in the soft candlelight-colored glow of the passageway.  Above, clear, bright white against the blackness of the stairwell shaft, the tiny patch of surface sunlight beamed.

The stairwell shaft!  The way out!

Her heart smashed into her throat.  She spun, ran toward the door, and in a single, violent motion a blast of fiery hot wind roared past her, stinging her skin as it scraped by, and she winced against the needle-sharp bite.

And the huge, heavy metal door of rivets and cross-braced metal beams snapped closed in front of her with a final, hollow clang.

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